Our recently published Object of the Month for March was the list of the first ESRO contracts with industry. We flesh out this story further today, with a special focus on George van Reeth - the man who was instrumental in setting up ESRO (and later ESA) contract regulations and who accumulated more than 30 years of service for ESRO and ESA.
A brief overview of a lifetime contribution to European space
Van Reeth joined ESRO - the European Space Research Organisation - in 1964 with a doctorate in law and experience as a Legal Expert at NATO. He was appointed to organise the Contracts Service at ESTEC, which had just started to operate and where he brought in new advanced forms of contracts for the first ESRO satellite programmes.
However, his contribution to the forerunners of ESA was not limited to ESRO: in 1972 he became the Administrative Director of ELDO (the European Launcher Development Organisation) and later its Acting Secretary General. On the merger of ELDO and ESRO in 1975 he was appointed ESA Director of Administration, based in Paris. Beyond his responsibility for budgets and procurement in this role, he played a major part in building the foundations of ESA and was involved in all aspects of European space policy, including international relations, industrial policy and relations with other space organisations, until his retirement at the end of 1991.
Incentive contracts for ESRO in his own words
One of his primary achievements was the introduction of new forms of contracts for the first ESRO satellite programmes (ESRO I and II, HEOS-1 and 2, TD-1 and 2). These adapted the incentive contracts and project control methods practised in the US, incorporating incentive clauses and combining price, technical performance and schedule terms, for the European environment.
Some measure of the enormous success of his approach can be seen in a 1969 article van Reeth authored for the October ESRO/ELDO Bulletin – ‘Le Contrat avec intéressement comme instrument de gestion’. In it he offers a brief ‘history’ of incentive contracts and their journey from the US to Europe and outlines the various mechanisms for controlling price, delivery and performance.
He goes on to define procedures: "il est nécessaire d’établir les caractéristiques techniques sur l’obtention desquelles sera basée l’intéressement (pour un satellite, par exemple, poids, fiabilité, puissance, précision de pointage en orbite, etc.). Les dates de livraison, ainsi que les dates d’événements déterminants (milestones), doivent être définies. Avant tout, estimation du coût qui servira de base pour l’application de l’intéressement cot, doit être négocié."
And the results obtained, speaking of HEOS-1: "Le contractant a obtenu le bénéfice maximum pour les performances et les délais, ce qui implique que l’Organisation a obtenu un satellite qui a donné satisfaction du point de vue technique et dans les meilleurs délais (le satellite a été lancé au cours de la première fenêtre de lancement disponible, a la date et a l’heure définies deux ans avant le lancement)."
He concludes with a summary of the mutual benefits for ESA and industry: "En tous cas, il est certain que le contrat avec intéressement a eu deux conséquences, dont l’intérêt ne peut pas être sous-estimé. En premier lieu, il a sensibilisé l’industriel a l’intérêt d’une bonne gestion et a créé, même à l’intérieur des équipes de projets, un esprit de compétition qui pousse à obtenir les résultats techniques et tenir les délais fixés parce que ces résultats sont définis dans le contrat comme une performance extraordinaire. De plus, les responsables techniques du client sont obligés de définir plus clairement leurs exigences et de contrôler les modifications inévitables proposées par un contractant qui, à chaque demande, pense à l’effet qu’elles pourraient avoir sur son intéressement."
(English translations can be found below.)
Strong foundations for the future ESA
In the proceedings of a 2011 Commemorative Colloquium for van Reeth, his colleague, Winfried Thoma (who took over as Head of the ESA Contracts Department in 1976) paid tribute to these foundations, laid in the 1960s:
“George had joined ESRO at ESTEC in 1964. There, in the temporary building and without secretarial support, he typed out the first contracts as well as the General Clauses and Conditions for ESA Contracts. This remains a remarkable document, still used to this day. The Conditions are modern and flexible, leaving enough scope to accommodate ESA’s special requirements for handling large-scale space technology development projects”.
Van Reeth’s legacy in the ECSR
While a large majority of ESRO’s contracts with industry are in deposit at the Historical Archives of the European Union, the set of ESA contracts was one of the first major collections to be sent to the European Centre for Space Records. The ECSR’s holdings also include a box containing a list of the first ESRO contracts with industry, from 1963 to 1969, providing vital information on contracts which have been lost or never deposited in the Archives, and helping our efforts to preserve complete records for tracing the development of ESA cooperation with industry You can read more about this list and see its first page as Object of the Month for March 2025.
An important institutional memory
As Karlheinz Kreuzberg (former head of Cabinet) noted at the 2011 Colloquium:
“having spent 27 years of his professional life in the service of ESA and of its predecessors, ESRO and ELDO, George was considered by many to be the memory of the Agency”.
The ESA Archives have inherited the physical endowment of those memories, both in the collections of contracts and van Reeth’s many papers, with the obligation and privilege to act as their custodian and make them accessible into the future.
Read more
Commemorative Colloquium in honour of George P. van Reeth (1924–2010)
Translations
"it is necessary to establish the technical characteristics on which the incentive will be based (for a satellite, for example, weight, reliability, power, pointing precision in orbit, etc.). Delivery dates, as well as milestone dates, must be defined. Above all, cost estimation, which will serve as a basis for the application of incentives, must be negotiated."
"The contractor obtained the maximum benefit for performance and deadlines, which assumes that the Organisation obtained a satellite which was technically satisfactory in the shortest possible time (the satellite was launched during the first available launch window, on the date and time defined two years before launch."
"In any case, it is certain that incentive contracts have had two consequences, the importance of which cannot be underestimated. Firstly, it has promoted an interest in good management within industry and has created, even within project teams, a spirit of competition which encourages obtaining technical results and meeting the deadlines set since these results are defined in the contract as extraordinary performance. In addition, the client's technical managers are obliged to define their requirements more clearly and to check the inevitable modifications proposed by a contractor who, with each request, considers the effect they could have on his incentives."
